Tuesday, September 28, 2010

A close to a wonderful year ends this Thursday for the juried shows sponsored by the school. The shows were simply fantastic and included the Georgia Photography Exhibit judged by Corinne Adams, the Southeastern Plein Air Exhibit judged by Bill Davidson, the Mixed Media/Collage judged by Kenson Thompson, the Palette Knife Exhibit judged by Angela Nesbit, The Portrait Society of Atlanta 2010 Juried National Exhibit judged by Dawn Whitelaw, the Atlanta Watercolor Exhibit judged by Marie Matthews, the Retro Americana Exhibit judged by Gary Bodner, the Atlanta Equestrian Exhibit judged by Robert Christie, and the Atlanta Pastel Exhibit jduge by Chin-Cheng Hung. Gorgeous works, wonderful judges!!!

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Maggie's lesson on COLOR RELATIONSHIPS!!!!! Whoa! Well, you just would have had to have been there...but the MAJOR take home message is RELATIONSHIPS OF COLOR and their DIFFERENCES!! Relationships, relationships, relationships!!!

We first determined the color of what Maggie calls "the largest piece of real estate" on the still life rectangle you chose to paint. You would then peripherally ;look to compare the color value relationship to a color a distance away, not directly adjacent to the area you just laid in. Try that a few times and your head really begins to hurt...it's not squinting... I admit, this was very difficult to do!!! We did this all day on the last day and you would simply be surprised how "off" value relationships can get if you do not follow this to the letter. And, when you tend to "forget" to use your peripheral vision, you get into major trouble with your color value relationships. The workshop was NOT about painting the objects but the color relationships of the subject areas of the still life. The objects will emerge and are dynamic!

The steps one can consider taking are:

1. Find the largest color value, then find your next largest piece of real estate and compare the value. Do this with a third area and compare the first two value colors with the third value color.

2. Find your brightest, lightest value.

3. Find your darkest values and let them merge.

4. Then find your local colors.

5. Do NOT paint objects; paint the color relationships and value. The objects will DANCE around the rectangle of your subject.

Small, fit, trim, agile, and a bundle of energy, Maggie Siner jumped around, demonstrating movement within a painting with animated gestures of her hands and self and also how light explodes and travels through the works of masters. You could sense the intention behind these artists and in her own personal, powerful art work and you could feel her excitement for teaching what she feels is crucial to painting! She decided early on to sock it to us feeling we could handle what she had to say and we were all the better for it!!! We spent the weekend learning, yes learning, the basic fundamentals about the relationships of color, how to translate value into color, understanding intensity and saturation, seeing the color of light, the color of shadows, and hearing this eloquent woman speak and share her infinite knowledge, wisdom and humor! Having taught internationally, Maggie has studied and taught on an international level. We were lucky to have her come to Atlanta and have begged her to come again and already a list is forming!!! Dramatic is how I would describe her work and explosively dynamic I would describe her teaching style...she is a MUST for any level learner!!!!

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

As an additional note to the previous post, here is a letter that one of the students of the school received this week as a result of work she posted on _______.com.

'Good Morning ___________,

We received your letter today and believe you deserve an explanation.

First of all, you were not being singled out for your actions. Our Intellectual Property attorney has filed more than 150 complaints with _______.com regarding improper or unauthorized use of our trademarks. Please understand that we must address trademark and copyright violations or run the risk of losing them to public domain.

This is nothing different than any other owner of a valuable property would do to protect their rights. Examples: If you painted a picture of a "Coke" bottle and titled it "Coca-Cola", you would hear from the Coca-Cola company. If you painted a picture of Mickey Mouse and offered it for sale, you would hear from Disney. Other well known images such as the Chevrolet "Bow-Tie" or the "Nike "Swoosh" would bring the same response.

We don't claim universal ownership of the "fiesta" word. We do, however, own the rights to the word as it relates to ceramic dinnerware.

...For the protection of our valuable brands, we must seek out and attempt to stop those who would profit from the popularity of our brands without our knowledge or authoriztion.